High school football is a world of transition. Sophomores become juniors, then seniors, then graduate; while other classes preceding them follow the same route, an endless cycle that sees thousands of players roaming the sidelines over the course of a decade.

At Russellville High School, one familiar face remained on the sidelines amidst the ever-changing environment, a face the football team — and the community — said goodbye to at her funeral on Thursday.

Susie Whorton was a photographer, friend and ardent supporter of the Cyclones football program, who passed away Monday evening after complications with cancer.

To describe her as merely a face would be an understatement: She was a presence, a personality who brought laughter and selflessness to the sidelines of the 100-plus Cyclone football games she attended and shot.

“She never met a stranger,” Cindy Pfeifer, a close friend of Whorton, said. “She could talk to anybody in any situation. She loved her children — the ones she gave birth to and the ones she took care of on the football field.”

People throughout the community packed Victory Baptist Church on Thursday to remember Whorton and the endless contributions she made to the football team. Her photography career began out innocently enough, as a way of documenting her children, Morgan and Heath, growing up. She began to take pictures of Heath at sporting events, and it soon grew to her taking pictures of his peers.

“Back when I was in my early teenage years, she bought a new camera and just started taking pictures of me at baseball games and stuff. And somewhere in there, she just started taking pictures of everybody,” Heath said. “I don’t know why she wanted to do it. I think it started off with ‘I want to take pictures of my son playing baseball,’ and she got addicted to giving other people that same joy.”

She discovered her passion for both the Cyclones and football when Heath played football for both the Whirlwinds and the Cyclones. She began shooting games in 2000, but her responsibilities with the program rapidly grew with her love for both the program and its players.

“What didn’t she do for our program?” said Jeff Holt, RHS head football coach who was a pallbearer at Whorton’s funeral. “First off, she was the person that really recorded all the memories. She took every picture, her and her family did all the highlight videos for us. She started a Cyclone newsletter that has become one of our kids’ favorite things to collect.

“More than that, she was just such a great supporter for our program and for our kids. Every kid that went through here thought of her as kind of like a mother figure. She took care of everybody.”

She also helped put together the weekly programs for Cyclone games. All of this work, which she did for free, took tens of hours out of her week, in addition to the full-time job she had as a branch manager at Simmons Bank.

“When she got home from work, she was on the computer,” Heath said. “The weekly routine was that on Friday night, she would go through all the pictures, even after the game was over. She’d stay up until midnight or later looking at them to make sure she got enough good ones. Saturday and Sunday, she would probably put in 12 hours on each of those days getting stuff for the programs done, and she would kind of touch them up throughout the week.”

Although she had made a name for herself as the ultimate football mom, she was more than a mother to many of the players who stood beside her on the sidelines: she was a friend.

“Those boys [football players], they came by the bank just to see her after they graduated,” Pfeifer said. “She formed a bond with them.”

She especially formed bonds with players who went on to play at the collegiate level. Past Russellville High School, her collegiate allegiances remained to whichever team had a former RHS playing on it: she would wear an Ole Miss jersey to an Ole Miss game to see former Cyclone Mitch Hall play, and wear Razorback attire to a Hogs game to watch Russellville native Zach Hocker kick.

Whorton made many friends with her sharp tongue and penchant for practical jokes, parts of her ever-present sense of humor. These qualities endeared her to many, both on and off the sidelines, despite a streak of stubbornness.

“She had her ornery side. She could be a pain in the butt sometimes,” Pfeifer joked.

The last game Whorton shot was Nov. 9 of last year, a 53-34 state playoff loss to Benton. Shortly after the new year, she began experiencing back pain. She went to a clinic for treatment and tests, and by early February her doctor referred her to an oncologist, fearing she might have cancer.

On March 6, doctors diagnosed her with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of cancer that had grown on her spine. Still, the doctors were optimistic that the cancer would go into remission.

“They were very, very optimistic,” Heath said. “We listened to some of them talking, and the message that we were getting most of the time was people battle with this their entire lives. There are people who live with cancer for decades. And that made my mom very optimistic as well.”

Whorton maintained her sense of humor through the treatment, which was oftentimes painful.

“She would tell me, ‘I’m thinking about what color wig I’m going to pick out. It’s going to be a relief not having to fix my hair all the time,’” Pfeifer said, who was with Whorton at UAMS through most of her treatment.

“Coach Holt came by one day, and Susie was drugged up, but when they talked about football, she remembered all the kids’ names and the positions they played,” Pfeifer said. “She just wanted to talk about next season and what kind of team they were going to have.”

“When I visited her in the hospital, the conversation always came down to kids in our program and fun memories,” Holt said. “She just had such a big heart for these kids, and was just like one of us. She was part of our staff.”

But her health deteriorated in late April, when she came down with pneumonia after her chemotherapy. On April 29, doctors suggested they take her off the ventilator, having done all they could for her. She passed away just minutes later.

Whorton was buried in a Russellville Cyclones T-shirt at a closed-casket funeral, following a crowded service that included the entirety of the current RHS football team, who arrived in their jerseys after Holt excused them from class to attend the funeral.

Both Heath and her daughter, Morgan, eulogized Whorton, remembering a person who had done so much and asked so little in return.

“It only took me about five minutes to think of a word to describe my mother,” Heath said during her eulogy. “The definition of selflessness is ‘having no concern for self.’”

Heath closed the eulogy by reciting quotes they found on her phone after her passing.

“‘To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.’ By that criteria, I think my mother is the most successful person I have ever met,” Heath said.

He said thank you, closed the Bible he had open on the podium, and stepped down from the stage. A short silence ensued, and then the hundreds of people gathered at the church broke into applause.